Vannevar Bush
and the 60th Anniversary of Science: The Endless Frontier
by Frederik
Nebeker
During World War II, Vannevar
Bush was the
most prominent engineer in the United States. He headed the national
research-and-development effort, first as chair of the National Defense Research Committee and then as
director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development. Born
115 years ago, on 11 March 1890, Bush was educated at Tufts,
Harvard and MIT. In 1919, he joined the faculty of MIT, and that
institution named him Dean of Engineering in 1932. In June 1940 —
when Germany had overrun most of Western Europe, and it appeared likely
the United States would be drawn into the war — Bush presented to
President Franklin Roosevelt a plan for an independent agency, the
National Defense Research Committee, to coordinate military
research. Roosevelt approved it immediately, and it became the
principal means of organizing military R&D in the United States,
with Bush serving as its chair.
The war
institutionalized the research contract. Traditionally, the military
contracted for equipment or parts. Here, it was research and
development, but not production, that was contracted for. Bush
insisted on this arrangement as a way of allowing universities and industrial
research laboratories to continue to function much as they had
earlier, and to retain a large degree of independence from the
military. After the war, he proselytized for continued government
support of research, notably through his report Science: The
Endless Frontier, published in July 1945. Bush, and his report,
played a large part in establishing the National
Science Foundation in 1950.
Bush made many other
contributions to engineering. He was an outstanding educator, and a
1922 textbook he and William Timbie wrote, Principles of
Electrical Engineering, became a standard introduction to EE
education,
appearing in four editions in the United States and in translation
in other countries. Bush was a computer pioneer. His study of the
behavior of electric-power networks, which made great calculational
demands, led him to develop a series of electromechanical analog
computers, including the so-called Rockefeller Differential Analyzer,
used during World War II to calculate ballistic tables and
study radar and fire-control systems. And Bush worked on
techniques of information retrieval, including the so-called Rapid
Selector that allowed microfilmed information to be located rapidly
through a binary code on the edge of the microfilm that could be
read automatically.
Bush served as president
of the Carnegie Institution from 1939 to 1955. In 1949, he published
the widely discussed Modern Arms and Free Men: A Discussion of
the Role of Science in Preserving Democracy. After his
retirement in 1955, he served on the boards of several companies.
The American Institute of Electrical Engineers awarded Bush the
Edison Medal in 1934; Eta Kappa Nu named him an Eminent Member in
1950; and President Lyndon Johnson presented him with the National
Medal of Science in 1964. Bush died in Belmont, Mass., on 28
June 1974.
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